Beyond the pale

Gratuitous violence. I wish I had a pound for every time I’ve heard those words in a panel discussion. It has come up at just about every crime convention I’ve attended, and it’s often the topic of heated debate in the bar as well.

 

The big question of course is when is violence gratuitous, and when is it necessary to the plot? In another contest, a famous actress who is known for her willingness to shed clothing on-screen once said, ‘Nudity is never essential to the plot; it’s often useful to the box office.’ Same principle exactly, and it’s a point of view.

 

Violence plays a very large part in real-life crime and mystery, so it’s logical enough that crime and mystery fiction should have a share of the action. The issue which raises so much discussion and an awful lot of hackles is how far should it go? How much should be there on the page in graphic, stomach-curdling detail, and how much should be left to the reader’s imagination?

 

Given the quantity of graphic, stomach-curdling detail is waved under our noses on TV and the internet, the imagination doesn’t need many words to set it in motion. Sometimes when I’m reading about fictional murder victims it’s hard to tell what the reader has put there and what I’m conjuring out of all the imagery sloshing around my mind. But sometimes it really is right there in the words I’m reading; and one way I can spot the difference is that in those cases there’s too damn much of it.

 

OK, OK – too much of it for me. My stomach is not more easily curdled than the average, but sometimes the level of violence in crime fiction is such that willing suspension of disbelief is stretched so thin it’s see-through. A gory punch-up every five pages, interleaved with scenes of non-accidental damage in full bone-splinter-and-brain-matter technicolor, with the odd smidgen of torture as added seasoning… sorry, but what happened to narrative development, well drawn characters, vivid setting - in other words,  the story?

 

I emphasise that this is personal taste. I know a lot of people enjoy it, or at least get a buzz from it, in a horrified, thank-god-it’s-fiction way. And this isn’t a treatise in favour of cosy crime fiction. In fact, to put the other side of the question, how about this issue which someone raised in a discussion the other evening: to what extent is crime fiction glorifying crime and turning a horrific part of real life into entertainment if it doesn’t spell out the level of damage but focuses on the puzzle element instead?

 

But even in that case, how far should we go? What falls outside the bounds of tolerability? Or, donning my commercial hat for a moment, what will readers simply not accept?

 

Here’s a story told by a crime writer who probably ranks in the top ten most popular in the English-speaking world. I won’t go into too much detail; suffice to say that her (men don’t have a monopoly on the graphic stuff) plot involved an instrument of torture, and her villain tried it out on a live animal, which didn’t remain alive very long. Manuscript goes to editor, who returns it in short order with firm instructions to do something about that scene. The animal couldn’t be allowed to die in pain; the readers wouldn’t stand for it.

 

In the published version, the animal was humanely tranquillised first; it was the human torture victim that died in agony. The readers didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

 

Crème de la Crime’s version of that, of course, is Kinky, the chihuahua who thinks he’s a rottweiler. He almost comes to grief in both Kaye C Hill’s Lexy Lomax books, but escapes to snarl another day. He has to. If he didn’t, readers wouldn’t stand for it.

Comments

[M Clement Hall]

The answer is built in. If the violence described is "gratuitous," ipso facto it is unecessary to the plot.
Alternatively, like nudity as described, if the person with the book enjoys violence per se, he would do better to Google the subject and watch the array of pornographic videos easily available to him/her.
Not many years ago I would not have added a "her" but having had benefit of Tess Gerritsen's teaching in Cape Cod, I remain surprised at the bloody scenes she describes, Hitchcock would not have approved, nor I think, would King.

[Mary]

In Greeley's, The Bishop Goes to University a professor is shot in the head. Blackie Ryan mentions, blood spatter, bone and brain bits. My imagination supplied all the gore I needed --there was plenty.
In Christie's, Murder at the Vicarage, same scene but we are only told his head lay on the desk as if asleep. I read this first at age 10, even then I knew it wasn't going to be that neat.
Both are great reads and neither are gorey.
I personally prefer my own very vivid imagination to the author "showing" me every drop of everything.
Again that is my personal taste.

[Robin Agnew]

Tess Gerritsen stopped by our store a couple months ago, and when I mentioned it to my book club ladies, they all immediately asked "Is she nice?" I guess they were judging her by her books!

[T.N. Tobias]

Could be an example of books taking cues from television. I don't think it's going to far to say that CSI is more influential than Mickey Spillane or Raymond Chandler in crime fiction today. Ultra-violence is what passes these days for grit. But, as with everything, sometimes it just works. I personally like something gut-wrenching, something to make you uncomfortable. It takes a skilled writer to make you care enough to be emotional.

So maybe instead of less violence we just need better writers?